A Parent's Guide to Complexity

So there we were last night, finally in bed with reading in hand when my wife put her book down, paused thoughtfully for a moment before saying “the boys seem happy at the moment”.

And it’s true. They do. They seem happy, increasingly resilient, even a little more confident in themselves. Beat the drums and sound the trumpets! Which parent of teenage boys doesn’t want to be able to utter those words from time to time. Of course we want these things for our boys, but there seems to be a problem. We don’t really know how to deliver them.

We feed them: check

Clothe them: check

House them: check

Slip them some spending money from time to time against our better judgement: check

Drive them to parties and pick them up in the wee small hours: check

Provide access 24/7 to endless Netflix and computer games: check

Educate them and give them a range of experiences to draw on: check

Yet despite this, there have been times when each of them has been deeply unhappy, even intractably so. How can that be when we are so obviously ticking the teenage boy happiness checklist?

Raising boys is complex. (Raising girls they say is even more so God forbid). So this of course means that we poor parents are sentenced to long years of uncertainty, worry, intermittent feelings of failure and an abiding sense that ‘we must be doing this wrong’.

Those feelings are understandable and probably unavoidable. After all, they come with the territory of complexity. Yet I take comfort from this idea of creating confident, happy boys, comfortable in their own skin and ‘well-rounded’. We may not know what it’s going to take to get them there but we know that this is what we are working towards. Sometimes, as last night, it seems to be quite close. Other times it seems unattainably distant.

The point is of course that we are aiming for something. Our loosely-defined destination guides us every day as we learn this parenting thing. While we can never be sure how to get there, the idea is like a light on a distant hill inspiring us to act and learn together, even when we are most unsure.

So if you are facing something complex, whether raising a family or delivering something at work, identifying your light on the hill and keeping it in sight can help you navigate the uncertainty.

Now can I go back to reading my book?

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Author

Stuart Waters

As a coach and guide Stuart enjoys supporting teams and individuals to bring a new way of thinking and behaving to their work.